This clip of Judith Butler is so good I just had to share it on my account. The way they intertwine feminism and trans liberation together isreally refreshing, I have GOT to read more of their books. The original clip is from an interview they had with @/politicsjoe!
[Judith uses both they/them and she/her pronouns, but has said they prefer the former.]
Transcript:
[The way] feminism began was by calling into question, received notions of what a woman is. They tell you, “you belong in the household.” They tell you, “you’re good for reproduction.” They tell you, “You’re not able to do that kind of work. You can’t engage in sports. You can’t be a public speaker. You certainly can’t be a politician. You can’t be an intellectual, or if you are, you’re never going to be quite as good.”
So what has feminism been about? It’s been about contesting received ideas of what a woman is. Why did we start women’s studies, feminist studies, gender studies? Well, we did because we wanted to call into question these presuppositions that had been taken for granted for too long.
So we ask the question, what is it to be a woman? Or what does it mean to be a woman? Simone De Beauvoir, “one is not born but rather becomes a woman.” Really? It’s not biologically… it’s not the biological function that makes you a woman? No, it’s not the biological function. It’s actually nothing specific about the biology that alone defines you as a woman. It’s part of the picture, but how you live that, way you deal with that, is a question of history. It’s a question of freedom. It’s how you negotiate your situation, which is a historically complicated one, where there are established norms and roles.
So feminism has always kept the question open, “what is a woman,” And refused to answer it. Refused to answer it on principle. Because we don’t know all the things women can be and do, and we’re not about to say in advance, “This is who you are. Stay within your limits. Stay within this category. We’ve decided this is what a woman is, and you have to live there.” No, we don’t do that. We’re a freedom struggle.
It sucks so much that it took years for me to figure my gender out, so many years never feeling fully satisfied calling myself anything, because of joint transphobia from cis people and misogyny + exorsexism from other trans people. Like, on one hand I had cis people try to force me to be feminine, pushed me into being A Woman in a way that made me so uncomfortable and dysphoric that I became extremely avoidant and negatively biased towards it, thought I had to be a man and only a man or otherwise I would have to be that same thing getting forced onto me. Then while I was growing up there were transmeds everywhere, I briefly was one after some adults pulled my 14 year old self into a Discord server from Tumblr because I was openly IDing as a demiboy. And obviously they, all together, were able to dismantle a younger teenagers half-baked arguments and understanding of Big Scary Words and they sounded smart, so I thought they must be right. Then being surrounded by misogyny, the constant discourse about queer women of this or that group, the right-wing and antifeminist memes of my teen years being everywhere, Gamergate, transmeds… it only made me feel both unhappy in my manhood because it was so focused on self-hate, but it also unknowingly made me internalize so much misogyny and basically made the idea of also being a woman sound like a horrible, awful thing. Not great when you’re both
But there’s a silver lining to it, from when I got pulled out of the transmed spiral into hell, that I still remember to this day. There was this trans guy on my bus who was just… the most radiant and incredibly positive person I’d ever met. He was always there for me when I was going through all that depression and moping around, no matter how ridiculous I thought I was being, he showed me happy music and patted my back and was just. Always a friend! And he barely even knew me! One day I find out two things. First of all, he didn’t have gender dysphoria. And it confused the hell out of me, because The Worms had taken over my brain and I thought, wait, what, aren’t those people [insert horrible stereotype here]? That shook me hard enough. But THEN, not long after I found out the guy- this positive, unconditionally kind guy who was seemingly friends with everyone- was getting bullied. By almost all the other trans people in my school, including ones I thought were nice. Purely for not having gender dysphoria. And I realized how fucked up my new “friends” twice my age really were and said fuck that, bye assholes! Shout out to Marco the best trans guy of all time.
About a year later, largely thanks to Marco, I was very open about being trans. I didn’t know I was nonbinary yet, but I was much more comfortable in my manhood and went by just a male name and pronouns despite not “passing” at all. And I met this person who at the time was IDing as a cis pan guy. We became REALLY good friends, I sometimes got asked kinda weird questions but I was open to it, I knew my friend’s parents were conservative and not everybody’s gonna know everything, though I did put my foot down [gently] a couple times when I needed to. I just existed, openly, around people. And just last year, I got an email from her. It turned out, she was a trans woman and she had no idea that was even an option for her. And what helped her figure it out? According to her, it was meeting me. Realizing it was an option, because I didn’t hide who I was in front of a supposedly cis person who was confused, but never mean, always tried. Hearing that was fucking life-changing
I think my point to all of this is like. Actually, being open about who you are is a good thing. I don’t think you should ever feel ashamed for being open about yourself and living confidently with it. You might not realize it, but you literally change people’s lives and make them realize that they don’t have to be miserable purely by existing openly. That being trans can bring you joy and happiness. Marco, purely by being nice to me and being open about his identity, pulled me out of a self-hating spiral that was built on harassing trans kids. I, purely by existing, helped a trans girl who didn’t even know what the hell a transgender person was, who didn’t always use the right language and who I openly talked to about being trans anyways, correcting but never shaming her for it, realize that she could be trans, too. Your open existence literally brightens people’s lives
i always like asking random people i know what their gender would be if it had to be one specific song. i always get interesting answers. it’s pepper steak from OFF for me